Oxford start-up brings a new twist to olympic legacy
18th September 2012
Activity Rewards, a start-up company, has today announced the launch of imotiva.com, providing incentives for individuals to exercise and a new way for sports-related organisations to engage with their members. imotiva has been developed within the Isis Software Incubator, which provides support to allow business ideas from Oxford University staff and students to be developed into successful companies.
The unique approach taken by imotiva allows individuals to track their exercise and sport using their choice of fitness apps but also through their preferred clubs or venues such as gyms, sports centres or at events. This will be the first platform in the UK that provides such a wide choice of how to collect points and what to spend them on.
There is also an enormous opportunity for local retailers such as shops, cafés and restaurants to get involved and use the imotiva platform to provide attractive incentives to imotiva members that not only motivate but allow the local retailer to build a loyal customer following and help bring customers through the door.
Each activity gains the user points on www.imotiva.com which they can spend online or with local shops and retailers. The website also motivates users through challenges such as www.5×50.co.uk and competitions to encourage them to get fit and even compete against friends and teams.
John Stuart, an Oxford University graduate and founder & CEO of the company said: “One of the biggest challenges for people getting involved in sport and exercise is motivation. Often people have a trade off as to how they spend their free time and our goal is to motivate them to use that time doing something healthy even if it’s going for a walk.”
“Watching the stars at the London Olympics and Paralympics creates an enormous wave of enthusiasm but it will take sustained effort to keep this going. Through imotiva we are able to provide detailed insights into the behaviour of people who are exercising and identify and support people as they might consider stopping or slowing down again.”
“imotiva is free for clubs, venues and organisations and most importantly, it’s free for individuals too”
“Research into the effectiveness of financially based incentives to drive motivation has given us confidence that a unified reward platform like imotiva will deliver value – achieving between a 12% and 35% uplift in participation.”
Financially based motivation in sport and health programs is not a new concept. However, nearly all applications of it so far have been bespoke or small scale, making them hard to manage and less attractive. imotiva allows all sorts of programs, clubs and venues with sport, health and activity at their core to benefit from the platform.
Tom Hockaday, Managing Director of Oxford University Innovation said: “The Isis Software Incubator was set up to provide practical, commercial support and mentoring for ventures like imotiva, which has scope and potential to drive positive social change”
Initial feedback from organisations using the imotiva platform has been very positive. Imotiva is being used in a diverse number of locations already to encourage and motivate healthy activity. The first UK user was the Allendale Centre in East Dorset which is using imotiva with their 5000 community members.
The Luke Adams Foundation, backed by the Australian Government in Western Australia, is using the platform to reach 5,000 sports clubs and encourage participation. Organisations such as Oxford University and Glasgow University are rolling out the platform. Social challenges like5x50.co.uk are using imotiva to encourage participation.
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